Making Peace Through A War On Methods Of Production

Earth Day must have been a severe disappointment to the movement`s anti-corporate activists. The message of the rallies and television specials seemed to be that everyone is to blame for the environmental crisis, and everyone must do their part to solve it.

The public relations offensive launched by the chemical and plastics industries and by individual firms such as McDonald`s Corp. and Waste Management Inc. helped deflect criticism. ``Look how green we are,`` their commercials cried.

Yet corporate behavior remains the main target of government action to clean up the environment. And for Barry Commoner, one of the pied pipers of the movement, those efforts should be stepped up tenfold.

``Pogo`s analysis of the environmental crisis-`We have met the enemy and he is us`-is appealing but untrue,`` Commoner writes in his latest

environmental manifesto, ``Making Peace With the Planet.``

``Corporate managers . . . make the decisions that obligate the rest of us to participate in the ecological war`` against the planet.

His strategy for the next burst of environmental activism should make corporate lobbyists lick their lips with glee, since it will provide them with near limitless employment opportunities.

``The increasingly acute global environmental crisis can only be resolved by a comprehensive transformation of the present systems of production-in agriculture, manufacturing, power production and transportation,`` he writes. Like most environmentalists, Commoner calls the last two decades of government regulation a failure. The air and water are only marginally cleaner, the Earth is heating up, millions of pounds of dangerous toxics are spewed into the ground and water daily and the waste sites are filling up.

He parts company with many environmentalists on why the government failed, though. It wasn`t because President Ronald Reagan cut back the number of inspectors or didn`t allow tighter limits, he argues.

Rather, it`s the use of limits that is wrong.

Commoner`s model for regulation comes from what he claims are the Environmental Protection Agency`s greatest success stories over the last two decades. Between 1975 and 1987, lead emissions declined 94 percent. Why? It was banned in paint and severely restricted in gasoline.

Industrial and agricultural use of DDT and PCBs-known carcinogens-also were banned. Not surprisingly, their incidence in body tissues declined.

Commoner calls for the elimination of most of the petrochemical industry and substituting the natural products that performed the same functions before World War II.

He calls for elimination of all nuclear power and most fossil fuels and substituting solar energy. And he says the nitrogen-based chemical fertilizer business can be replaced by pest management and organic farming.

This radical change in production technology, Commoner asserts, can be accomplished without jeopardizing the Western world`s standard of living. And it can be done in the next 40 years, about the same amount of time since most of the problematic industrial practices came into widespread use.

Commoner`s analysis is superficial on both sides of the equation.

He presumes that the environmental apocalypse is nigh. Yet the threats posed by global warming and the hole in the ozone layer are subjects on which scientists can and do disagree, sometimes vehemently.

Similarly, his proposed solutions are half-baked at best. Take one example.

Commoner asserts Detroit has conspired to keep the stratified charge engine out of production. A 1974 National Science Foundation study said the engine substantially reduces car emission. Forcing carmakers to adopt this engine type would solve the smog problem, he says.

What he fails to mention is that Detroit has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to perfect the engine. So far, it pollutes more, not less.

Yet some of his proposals make economic as well as environmental sense. Using government purchasing to bring down the cost of solar batteries and create a solar energy industry should be part of the nation`s strategy to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels.

Commoner correctly argues that corporate America is key to cleaning up the environment. But a long menu of market incentives for helping business reach that greener future would have been more useful than this prescription for economic suicide.